So I asked Pamela Hieronymi, a professor of philosophy at UCLA who studies ethics and moral responsibility (and who served as a consultant on The Good Place), whether the Central Park scolds were providing some form of value by yelling at everyone they deemed to be acting dangerously. “It’s very unlikely,” Hieronymi says. Beyond the fact that public shaming doesn’t often work as intended, Hieronymi cites an unusual source: Judith Martin, the etiquette expert better known as Miss Manners. “One of her basic maxims is to presume the best of the other person,” she says. (Also: KTTV-TV)

A team of researchers at UCLA has set a new record for preparing and measuring the quantum bits, or qubits, inside of a quantum computer without error. The techniques they have developed make it easier to build quantum computers that outperform classical computers for important tasks, including the design of new materials and pharmaceuticals.

“We don’t need a pandemic to breathe cleaner air,” says Yifang Zhu, professor at the Fielding School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles. “There is a sustainable way for a society to achieve a cleaner world in the future. We need to do more than we’re doing right now.”

Ninez Ponce, director of the Center for Health Policy Research at the University of California, Los Angeles, said nationally African-American and Latino communities have suffered an unusually high rate of infections. “Lack of access to health care and also with that, a disproportionate burden of some chronic conditions for communities of color, that’s getting exacerbated, or spun out more in places like Los Angeles,” Ms. Ponce said. (Also: Ventura County Star)

“Learning how to live in this kind of social straitjacket is kind of a new thing for us,” said Steve Cole, a genomics researcher at UCLA. He said loneliness isn’t just a mental deficit; it can be a physical one, too. “We’re literally more likely to die, more likely to get cancer, more likely to get heart attacks, more likely to get Alzheimer’s disease, and more vulnerable to viral infections, when we’re lonely.”

UCLA researchers have launched a new clinical trial that uses a hormone suppresser commonly used to treat men with prostate cancer to help improve clinical outcomes for men infected with COVID-19. The phase 2 trial will assess if temporarily suppressing male hormones will reduce the severity of COVID-19 illness by helping patients get out of the hospital faster, decrease the need for intubation and improve mortality. (UCLA’s Dr. Matthew Rettig is quoted. Also: City News Service)

But the increase in deaths could also be attributed to people dying at home from COVID-19, or dying from heart attacks and strokes because they avoided the hospital, said Karin Michels, professor of epidemiology and chair at UCLA.